Communication through Technology

Lately, in the news, there has been many stories of schools and/or classroom receiving IPads or Tablets to use in the classroom. I have not seen many special education classrooms featured and I wonder why?

I teach students with autism. Communication skills is one of the most important things that I can teach my students. I have 6 students. 4 out of the 6 students are non-verbal. My staff and I do the best we can to aide the non verbal students in making decisions of expressing wants and needs through pictures that we print or draw. Often, it is difficult, because we can not read the minds of our students.

In addition, my students as well as many other students with autism show an affinity for and skills in using a computer.

I believe that if each of my students and I had an Tablets to use in the classroom, their communication skills, social skills and speaking skills would improve greatly.

I intend on using Tablets to not only foster communication amongst my students, but also to train my assistants in the proper way to handle behaviors.

I have done much research and have found many apps available on Tablets that would be beneficial, unfortunately, these apps are not available on our desktop computers within the classroom.